The Swing

The Swing, oil painting created about 1767 by French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard. This is Fragonard’s most celebrated painting, as well as one of the best-known images in 18th-century art. It illustrates the elegance and playfulness of the Rococo style, which dominated French art during this period.

The risqué subject was chosen by a man believed by some researchers to be the Baron de Saint-Julien, who wanted a portrait of himself with his young mistress. This man is the lover concealed in the shrubbery and, in his original brief, he specified that the swing should be pushed by a bishop. This would have been meant as a harmless, private joke, as Saint-Julien held an important post in the Roman Catholic Church, as receiver general of the French clergy. Even so, the suggestion shocked the first artist that the baron approached. Fragonard was more accommodating, although he did insist on replacing the bishop with the more traditional figure of a cuckolded husband.

Fragonard made the subject of the swing, a conventional symbol of inconstancy, his own by adding a host of witty details. In the foreground, a tiny lapdog—a symbol of fidelity—raises the alarm by yapping loudly, but the husband takes no notice. The statues, which seem half alive, share in the conspiracy. The putti—traditional attendants of Venus, the goddess of love—gaze up adoringly at the girl, while Cupid raises a finger to his lips. The girl is caught in a shaft of sunlight, while the frills and flounces of her dress echo the luxuriant foliage in the trees. Her two admirers, meanwhile, are bathed in shadows, and the outstretched arm of the lover has an obvious phallic significance.